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SupSup 67 Yo people are loving monsters quote:And there was a morph-type Brute who had come to the dorms after spending weeks at the island’s healing hospital. Her own brothers had set her bed on fire while she slept when they found out she was an Avowed. It had made global news. I dunno Alden, I think that's still pretty heroic. quote:“Honestly,” he said, “being a hero sounds so drat horrifying right now. If someone walked into this kitchen and said, ‘Alden Thorn, run with an injured child on your back for days until you are bloody and broken,’ I think I’d have to ask if the kid was Kibby or not.”
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Jul 17, 2023 00:52
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nrook posted:Let’s at least set as a floor “my posting enemies are subliterate buffoons that probably think Hamlet is about historical tensions between Scandinavian countries”, not “my posting enemies are morally depraved slavery enthusiasts.” Yeah, as soon as it turned into a debate on whether the Avowed were technically slaves or not I went running in the other direction. There is no way that discussion goes anywhere other that nastiness.
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Jul 17, 2023 00:53
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SupSup 54: I swear tp god kibby better not loving die Also re: Thresholder It's not great but I'm slowly warming up to it? Also I like this next planet more than the first, but I honestly dislike vampire stories so I'm biased there. The setting is becoming more interesting, with implications that the thresholders are explicitly put in situations that cause ideological conflict between the two. I think my big issue with the first arc is Perry is supposed to be 'adaptable', but he has so little character to him in early chapters he feels like a non-entity. Also his AI does have some character, but also gets hurt more and more every conflict so it's just blehhhhhh, hurting the interesting character to keep the boring one alive. Finally I just don't care about vampires or their ethical conflicts the whole arc feels like something that should be a quick intro but just keeps going just like this sentence aaaaaa But still, it's taken a full arc to become okay and if it wasn't the author if TUTBAD I would have bailed ages ago. Even then I have a feeling that the moment I get distracted and miss a few chapters, I'm never going to get around to picking it up again...
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Jul 17, 2023 02:45
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I'm willing to excuse a lot of Thresholder's early flaws because it was a NaNoWriMo thing written while Wales was still actively writing TUTBAD. It picks up in quality very quickly once they get to the second world.
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Jul 17, 2023 03:05
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SupSup Patreon I'm excited to see what that RR folks think about the next two chapters. They are probably my favorites ones in the series so far, though the chat with Mother or Stuart are also up there.
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Jul 17, 2023 03:29
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Jul 17, 2023 04:27
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A big flaming stink posted:Time to Orbit 39: oh my god Tal names ker's AIs after AM
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Jul 17, 2023 07:57
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jesus loving christ the latest orbit chapter is a bummer
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Jul 17, 2023 12:44
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I really like how the worldbuilding of Time to Orbit is this slow drip of how hosed up everything back on Earth is. Like you hear about an independent Texas full of surprisingly gender affirming Christians and then it's casually revealed that it's a state run on convict labor that covers all of what's left of North America.
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Jul 17, 2023 23:18
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I'm 99 chapters into "A Practical Guide to Sorcery" and I'm really digging it. Damien is such an adorable gullible puppy, and I'm going to riot if anything happens to that innocent boy. I like magic system, it seems really well fleshed out with enough flexibility with the connections the author can make with transmogrification versus transmutation that let them be creative to get the effects they want while still having defined rules. Sebastien/Siobhan's whole gender flipping thing has had a shockingly small real impact in the story other than it being a good disguise. They've not really explored the identity implications much at all. A chapter or two at the start and then one when she had to dissect some frogs. It feels like a real missed opportunity for the author. Maybe it'll get explored more in the next 60 or so chapters. I've really liked everyone else's POV where they keep building up this incredible mystique for The Raven Queen and attribute tons of abilities to her that Siobhan doesn't have at all, even if she's legitimately a real star student. I do like how when we flip between POVs you can see both Siobhan and everyone else is really working on limited info and their own preconceived notions and how they color their perceptions of the same events. I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators.
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Jul 18, 2023 02:48
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'm 99 chapters into "A Practical Guide to Sorcery" and I'm really digging it. Damien is such an adorable gullible puppy, and I'm going to riot if anything happens to that innocent boy. I like magic system, it seems really well fleshed out with enough flexibility with the connections the author can make with transmogrification versus transmutation that let them be creative to get the effects they want while still having defined rules. I never got the feeling the genderswap element of PGtS was supposed to be anything other than a disguise. When Siobhan's using the amulet, her internal narration uses the name "Sebastian" but still uses female pronouns. I suppose it's possible more is going to come up, but the impression I got was she still identifies as female but doesn't mind being male as a disguise.
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Jul 18, 2023 03:23
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Siobhan is too busy learning magic, paying off her debts, and trying not to get arrested to give any thought towards trivial matters like her personal identity.
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Jul 18, 2023 05:17
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this used to be about dungeons but now it's about pinion getting to be a girl more <3
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Jul 18, 2023 21:00
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cultureulterior posted:I'm recently reading TIME TO ORBIT: UNKNOWN, which is a novel about a colonization attempt going incredibly wrong. The main character wakes up from cryosleep to a *situation*, which proceeds to get worse. It's pretty great, I sent it on to like three other people who also think it's great. I also caught up and am reading their other story now, which I'm enjoying too. It's kinda what I wanted from A Practical Guide to Sorcery. https://havenstory975986403.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/one/
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Jul 19, 2023 14:10
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I read the first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown and I agree it's good. Kind of intriguing how they are characterizing the narrator when he doesn't have anyone to bounce off of. It starts off with them saying it speaks ill of the javelin program that he got in. Very self deprecating but maybe indicating that they are a bad person in some way? Then they need to fix a thing, and he can do either the safe way which kills 1000 people, or he can risk himself to hopefully get around that. Not understanding the situation or how many other colonists are on the ship, I don't personally know about that being the right choice. It does paint an interesting picture of who this person is though.
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Jul 19, 2023 14:34
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Wittgen posted:I read the first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown and I agree it's good. Kind of intriguing how they are characterizing the narrator when he doesn't have anyone to bounce off of. Yesterday I binged the entire serial published so far. It took a few chapters to get into but suddenly it was 4am.
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Jul 19, 2023 16:49
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SupSup 68 He's gonna buy a new bomb coat for the Spree, isn't he?
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Jul 19, 2023 20:38
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Nothingtoseehere posted:SupSup 68 He's gonna buy a new bomb coat for the Spree, isn't he? That was my first thought, but is it conspicuous enough? I don't know if the cost of Rabbit clothes are well known of not. Also, I really love how the story portrays cross language communication. I am a translator and it's delightful. It is so elegant how it can be as much or as little of an issue as needed for the scene, and it feels perfectly natural.
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Jul 19, 2023 20:59
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SupSup 68 Guy really went up and talked about his near-death experience for his icebreaker huh? Wittgen posted:That was my first thought, but is it conspicuous enough? I don't know if the cost of Rabbit clothes are well known of not. It's also important to remember that he learned to speak from an 8 year old (or at least an Artonan that looks like an 8 year old. I don't think we were ever told how old she is or how quickly their species matures). So his word choice may be... unusual. Though still much better than it was before his trip to the moon.
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Jul 19, 2023 21:21
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SS68: I disagree with that. Kibby is a genius, and she wouldn't mislead Alden about word choice in a way that would match up with the system google translate. I think the system was deliberately doing a bad job. It's been forced to do a good job translating the magic book for him, so it's overcompensating? Restricting access to knowledge of all kinds, including language knowledge, feels like part of Earth System's job.
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Jul 19, 2023 21:49
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Nitrousoxide posted:SupSup 68 Well, (SupSup 68) he did considerably undersell it. When he was talking about disliking crowds and enjoying minor comforts I couldn't help but think that sounds like exactly how the knights' summer home place seemed to be set up. So I'm guessing that's a general response to having one's authority bound. Assuming I have my dates right, this was the last update on my Patreon sub, and I don't think I'll renew. Not because I don't think the story is worth it - SupSup is probably one of the best webserials I've ever read - but because I think reading it one chapter at a time isn't for me. I'll probably resub in 2-3 months and hopefully have a bunch of chapters to devour all at once. Oh, and for non-patreon readers, the update notes that the normal RR update will be running late today. Bremen fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 22:02
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SS 68 I agree with one of the Patreon comments who said that Natalie Choir might end up getting some sort of crush on Alden, due to the combination of him being very kind and non-threatening (due to being asexual and all, versus most other guys who are crazy about her due to all her points in Appeal) and Alden likely being very good looking himself due to all of the parrot Avowed healer's "improvements" (from what I understand, he's basically "perfect" physically). He's also a pretty interesting guy compared with other brand-new Avowed. I also want to learn more about that F-Rank Rabbit. I'm curious exactly what such low-rank Avowed are able to do. She mentions her Skill, but that doesn't give a good idea of what specifically it can do that actually counts as any sort of power. Nitrousoxide posted:SupSup 68 I think the clear implication about Alden's Artonan isn't that there's anything wrong with his speaking, but just that the Earth system does a bad job of translating Artonan. Actual Artonans have been able to understand him just fine, while the Earth System was translating what he was saying into near-gibberish until he specifically tried to dumb it down and account for the poor translation (sort of like how Google translate works better if you write something in a very simple way). Remember that Alden also watched a huge amount of Artonan TV, so he knows enough to notice any distinctions between the way children and adults speak. Also, regarding the ice-breaker, Alden's intent here was just to get ahead of the rumor mill. He knew it would be awkward, but he (probably correctly) figured it would be best to tell the story himself instead of letting it spread through rumors.
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Jul 19, 2023 22:17
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Alden has always been attractive. There were three other teens at the consulate who were into him, and the costume lady called him pretty.
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Jul 19, 2023 22:34
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I have one question about SS that I probably should have asked during the Q&A period: (This should be safe for non-Patreon people) Why are spell impressions so limited? If my understanding is correct, all they would need to "store" is the instructions for how to perform the spell. If someone has enough free authority to cast a D-Rank (or whatever) Spell, why couldn't they get impression for like 10 different D-Rank spells? It seems like spell impressions should use drastically less authority than Skills (and probably foundation points, though we don't know exactly how authority is used to transform the body/mind). Unlike skills (which require a whole "machine" built from their bound authority), spell impressions are "using their existing authority to cast a spell, with the casting automated by the System." The one explanation I can think of is "the authority needed to cast the spell is completely set aside solely for casting that spell," which is hilariously lovely and inefficient (but that wouldn't exactly be anything that new regarding the way Avowed's authority is used). Wittgen posted:Alden has always been attractive. There were three other teens at the consulate who were into him, and the costume lady called him pretty. The costume lady was from after he became Avowed, and as a Rabbit he automatically got some foundation points in Appeal. But I do get the impression that Alden was at least decent looking before that.
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Jul 19, 2023 22:57
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Ytlaya posted:I have one question about SS that I probably should have asked during the Q&A period: (SupSup Patreonish spoilers to a non spoiler question) That might be because if leveling up caused your spell impressions to stop working that would at the very least clue the humans in to what was going on with bound and unbound authority, which seems to be something they've tried to avoid. So instead a spell impression sets the authority aside.
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Jul 19, 2023 23:12
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Ytlaya posted:I have one question about SS that I probably should have asked during the Q&A period: This is presumably it. Since you could not know how much free authority the Avowed would have to potentially cast with. An avowed who just went through a new round of affixations would suddenly find themselves unable to use any/most of their spells for lack of sufficient free authority as their stuff gets bound up in new skills or foundation points.
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Jul 19, 2023 23:23
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Alternatively, just because avowed can't feel their authority freaking out after affixation, doesn't mean that said free authority isn't pitching a fit. If the system binds up authority into skills it can force them to be used right away. That may not be true (or it may be metaphysically expensive) to coerce the free authority in that way. Another option could be that spell affixations are much more efficient, and the Artorians are stingy with them because A) it's kind of a bad look for the servant class to be extremely good at casting spells and B) they don't want avowed to load up on a bunch of spells that are "better" than skills to the point where they need a big pool of free authority at all times.
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Jul 20, 2023 00:59
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Patrick Spens posted:Alternatively, just because avowed can't feel their authority freaking out after affixation, doesn't mean that said free authority isn't pitching a fit. If the system binds up authority into skills it can force them to be used right away. That may not be true (or it may be metaphysically expensive) to coerce the free authority in that way. Another option could be that spell affixations are much more efficient, and the Artorians are stingy with them because A) it's kind of a bad look for the servant class to be extremely good at casting spells and B) they don't want avowed to load up on a bunch of spells that are "better" than skills to the point where they need a big pool of free authority at all times. I'm thinking that it's the "enough bound authority is allocated to cast the spell" thing Nitrousoxide and I mentioned (and I think might be the same thing you're talking about in the first part of this post?), mainly because the System isn't normally going to leave someone with significant amounts of free authority (and they're going to have barely any immediately after an affixation, and people would have noticed if they suddenly weren't able to use spell impression immediately after affixing). I guess the main advantage to spell impression is the reliability of it. You're doing stuff that any Artonan mage could do, but it requires no thought and you can't make a mistake. Actually, I just remembered that spell impressions basically define certain classes, or at least Adjuster. The description of Adjuster in an earlier chapter is the following: quote:Adjuster of Reality was basically a build-your-own mage class. Adjusters got a huge list of reality-altering spells to choose from in the beginning, and based on their choices, they were eventually pushed along increasingly narrower paths toward unique specializations. Hannah, for example, had chosen a basic mobile barrier for her first spell, and she’d eventually leaped from that into things like the magic preservation bubble she’d used on Alden. IIRC Rabbit is a uniquely Skill-focused class. Which I guess in a way makes them the most similar to Artonan Knights, who I think primarily just affix a powerful Skill and develop it (like Alden is currently doing). It seems like the other classes either involve lots of foundation points (Brute, Meister) or spell impressions (Adjuster). edit: One kind of vaguely related thing that confuses me is why things like low-level Brutes and Meisters exist in the first place. From what I understand, classes are just allocated based on what the Artonans desire (so they have nothing to do with an individual's own talents). But why in the world would they even want weak Bludgeon Meisters or whatever? It seems like they'd prefer all the low-ranks to do utility classes, who can at least do something useful with their abilities instead of "just being a person who is kind of strong." Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 04:10
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Ytlaya posted:Actually, I just remembered that spell impressions basically define certain classes, or at least Adjuster. Okay yeah then the Artorians would definitely want to make sure spell impressions tie up a meaningful amount of free Authority quote:edit: One kind of vaguely related thing that confuses me is why things like low-level Brutes and Meisters exist in the first place. From what I understand, classes are just allocated based on what the Artonans desire (so they have nothing to do with an individual's own talents). But why in the world would they even want weak Bludgeon Meisters or whatever? It seems like they'd prefer all the low-ranks to do utility classes, who can at least do something useful with their abilities instead of "just being a person who is kind of strong." I kind of assume they don't really care about D of F rank anythings all that much. A bunch of the low rank folks are probably getting the system more to lock down their Chaos potential than because rich Artorians really want F rank rabbits serving canapes. And having the spread of combat classes be similar through all the ranks makes it easier to sell the idea that the Artorians want soldiers rather than servants, both to Earth and to the parts of Artorian society that care about that. More cynically, combat classes are a pretty zero sum benefit for earth. Avowed who are good a fighting are mostly fighting each other (or other nonpowered humans). Avowed who can build bridges or heal people can increase the development level of Earth, which will make it harder to control. So the Artorians have no real incentive to have the small fry be more useful to Earth. And speaking being cynical about Artoria. Why in the world did Body Drainer happen? What loving committee went, "Yeah we want an Avowed that can magically cannibalize people." Like the whole give teenagers superpowers at random thing is pretty fuckin irresponsible, but what exactly was the preferred use case for that particular spell? What wizard is looking to summon Super Dracula? and what do they want to do with him? See also: Sways. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 04:45
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Cancer treatment?
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Jul 20, 2023 04:48
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Patrick Spens posted:And speaking being cynical about Artoria. Why in the world did Body Drainer happen? What loving committee when, "Yeah we want an Avowed that can magically cannibalize people." Like the whole give teenagers superpowers at random thing is pretty fuckin irresponsible, but what exactly was the preferred use case for that particular spell? What wizard is looking to summon Super Dracula? and what do they want to do with him? Personal assumption given it was a U-class is an ill-planned experiment in trying to replicate Gorgon's ability to consume authority (given Alden's later comments that that must have been what he was actually draining) [patreon]: possibly as a way of reducing the burden on Knights as intermediate step before going to tree-assisted suicide.
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Jul 20, 2023 05:15
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Patrick Spens posted:Why in the world did Body Drainer happen? The implication seems to be that the skill's true purpose is different than how the guy in question used it (sort of like Alden's own). One thing that the story has (as far as I'm aware) been pretty unclear about is exactly how impactful supervillains are in general. Alden had a rare incident impact him specifically, but how often are supervillains actually a threat? If Hannah and Arjun were Chicago's only heroes when they were employed, it must not be *that* common (but it's not clear if they were the only ones, or if they were just some of the heroes employed by the city of Chicago). In general it seems a little unlikely that villains could be a huge issue given the fact that the vast majority of Avowed are "legal" and registered with Anesidora. Anyone who stands out would probably be cracked down on pretty fast, and I don't think there's been any mention of any huge history-defining incidents.
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Jul 20, 2023 05:43
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When Hannah is telling baby Alden what happened with Body Drainer, she references other heroes working in Chicago were busy. So at least two other heroes in Chicago at that time, but could have been more. I think it's likely that unique classes are built for specific people. The fact that they are not tradable seems mighty suspicious to me. It makes sense to me that the system/Artonans would keep a look out for individuals with unique authority and then exploit them as skill development guinea pigs.
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Jul 20, 2023 05:56
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Patrick Spens posted:And speaking being cynical about Artoria. Why in the world did Body Drainer happen? What loving committee when, "Yeah we want an Avowed that can magically cannibalize people." Like the whole give teenagers superpowers at random thing is pretty fuckin irresponsible, but what exactly was the preferred use case for that particular spell? What wizard is looking to summon Super Dracula? and what do they want to do with him? 
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Jul 20, 2023 06:40
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I am now capped on Time to orbit: unknown, and it is still very good. I'll have to check out the authors other web serial. I enjoyed the sequence where the crew sat down to watch a remake of a zombie movie that was completely historically inaccurate, it was nice to see the passage of time affecting the accuracy of history. I loved when one of the characters mentioned "drat I wish we had some proper recording devices, we are making history right now and nobody is going to know what happened on the ship here", it really heightened the isolation horror knowing that if things go wrong nobody will know what happened here. I've also realized something hilarious; the AI is constantly lying to all the humans about its reasoning system (namely, collating human dreams). The reason that the AI decided to wake the protagonist to be captain wasn't because he was the best choice according to some arcane algorithm, it was because he was the most famous person on the ship and all the dreamers were most comfortable thinking of him as captain. Win a popularity contest hosted across human dreams.
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Jul 20, 2023 11:33
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I'd love some of the non patreon people's reactions to Farther and Man on the Moon cause those two chapters slapped.
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Jul 20, 2023 12:42
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After everyone was commenting about time to orbit I jumped in and the various mysteries and the story as a whole really hooked me. Just dropping the world building mostly works but every now and then I'm just left confused and skim over it and it makes me think what purpose is this even serving. I think maybe I'm coming around on Sands although I feel like he will do something stupid in the next chapter and I will immediately go back to disliking him. One thing I'm really enjoying is we are getting answers regularly and not just new questions and mysteries even if we don't learn everything. Shame I've caught up and can't binge any more
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Jul 20, 2023 14:35
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Affi posted:I'd love some of the non patreon people's reactions to Farther and Man on the Moon cause those two chapters slapped. How about a high-quality review from RR? 
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Jul 20, 2023 14:42
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Re: Time to Orbit: Unknown. Was the protagonists gender put down somewhere as male? I would swear they were a she or a ke?
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Jul 20, 2023 14:45
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Gladi posted:Re: Time to Orbit: Unknown. They're named Aspen, which feels like a boy's name to me. Apparently it's gender neutral though, so I don't know. gently caress anyone who doesn't like the latest chapter of SupSup that is on Royal Road. I swear rr readers are some of the most boring, brain dead readers I have ever encountered.
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Jul 20, 2023 14:54
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